It starts off innocently enough. A sunny day in an idyllic suburban neighborhood. Folks gardening, a little kid riding on his scooter. But just a few seconds in, the makers of this TV ad for a Norwegian sports goods company decide to mix things up a bit by throwing in a rampaging mob of crazed zombies. The woman tending to her flowers screams. The man watering his plants scarpers. The idyllic neighborhood is turned on its head as the zombies, who appear to be exceptionally upset about something, march in.

The next minute or so features disgruntled local residents taking on the unwelcome visitors with a variety of sports equipment, damaging the zombies with tennis balls, soccer balls, hockey pucks and more besides.

Lured into a nearby sports stadium, the zombies are cornered by the residents, each one holding their (sports-related) weapon of choice – yes, like we said, it’s an ad for a sports goods company. With no way out, suddenly it’s the zombies who look like they’d rather be somewhere else.

The ad, which aired over the weekend on Norwegian daytime TV, has received a mixed reaction, though complaints on the company’s Facebook page accusing it of being, among other things, “stupid and provocative”, have persuaded the company, XXL, to only show it after 9pm.

The company said that while the response to the ad has been “very positive” – with one Facebook commenter calling it an “insanely good commercial” – many had also expressed the view that it was “scary and inappropriate.”

Either way, XXL has done alright out of it, as news of its zombie ad, and therefore of the company itself, spreads far beyond Norway’s borders.